All Year Round
by Om0cha
Summary: Only at Christmas was the light given freely. Only with Sasuke did it stay all year round. SasuNaruSasu.


Summary:Only at Christmas was the light given freely. Only with Sasuke did it stay all year round.

Pairing: SasuNaruSasu

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

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><p><strong>All Year Round<strong>

By Om0cha

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><p>The electricity had been cut again. This time at 9pm, when night had already long since taken up its mantle.<p>

They must have done it on purpose.

Naruto was eating at his low, living room table when it happened, his simple dinner of cup ramen having been delayed by the extra scrolls that he had been reading to catch up with everyone else at the Academy. It probably wasn't healthy, messing up his meals and sleep times like that, but since no one was there to criticise him it didn't really matter anyway.

He stopped inhaling his noodles when the lights debated for a few seconds about whether to stay on, before extinguishing with a flare and _pop_ and plunging his humble, two-room dwelling into an almost complete darkness.

He anticipated such and when it happened, all he did was put his chopsticks down on top of his ramen cup with a resigned sigh. Flipping over, he crawled on his skinny hands and knees across the floorboards to his bedside, hitting a few things –those books and kunai should _not _have been there— before reaching out blindly for his small set of bedside drawers. He patted down the front for the second knob, pulling it open when he found it. He straightened on his knees and reached inside for the candles that he kept in the back for these kinds of circumstances.

Candles were expensive (at least, much more expensive than ramen) and so he only had one more left, extracted with difficulty because it had somehow melded itself to the back of the drawer. It was enough anyway. The apartment that the old man Hokage had gotten for him was small enough for a single source of light to illuminate every speck of dust in every single nook and cranny.

He finished his dinner with the stubby candle blazing on the table and then because it was unfeasible to do anything else, he crawled into bed after cleaning up. Clutching his pillow with both arms, he snuggled under his sleeping cap and the moth-eaten covers, all the while hoping that the fire would at least burn until he had fallen asleep.

Blearily, he noted that he would have to buy more candles tomorrow. It was a weekend, meaning that he wouldn't have to listen to the girls squealing intolerably over that Sasuke jerk at the Academy. He should also try and get his electricity reconnected. Knowing his landlord, it would take at least a couple of days. More candles, more allowance money that he did not have.

After all, light always did come at a price.

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><p>They stopped disconnecting his electricity a little while before he became a genin.<p>

He wasn't completely sure of the exact reasons behind it, but he supposed that it had been something to do with the grand lecture that the old man gave to the adults after Mizuki had almost done Naruto in. Iruka had told him about it one day when he came over and in response to Naruto's sceptical expression, he had sternly assured him that the Sandime did care. The brown haired man had then proceeded to show Naruto how much _he_ cared by forcing a bowl of cooked vegetables down his throat.

Despite the consequent ten minutes of retching and gagging over the toilet bowl, Naruto didn't take any action to stop his teacher from inviting himself over in the future.

Not that he was disillusioned enough to think that it would have worked. He had learnt the hard way that locks and traps very rarely posed a serious obstacle to shinobi that were chuunin ranked and above; he would give Kakashi the benefit of the doubt and believe that he _had _intended to get hit by that chalkboard duster.

Weird man, that one.

Naruto still had candles in his drawer. They weren't so expensive anymore, now that the shop owner had stopped marking them up by ridiculous margins for his 'benefit'. He kept them as a safeguard, waiting for that day when perhaps this little light might disappear and he'd have to bring them out once more.

The dust gathered on the drawer as months of training and missions went by. It was wiped away once to make way for a framed photo, four – relatively— happy faces added to his little room.

Looking upon it with fondness after a particularly tiring and sweaty session at training ground 3, he thought that maybe, he might not have to paint his walls bright orange after all.

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><p>Darkness.<p>

His mind was filled with it. Literally, physically, so much so that it was touchable. It swirled around his legs, tainted the ankle-deep water and made his chest so much heavier in here than it was outside.

Funny because outside, he was currently falling into a bottomless canyon.

He delved deeper, wallowing through the filthy water and closer to the source. He found it and for the first time, he saw _it_. He thought that he heard a part of him crack, the sound echoing down the sewers of his mind with the first insane cackle of evil laughter that came from behind those golden bars.

The darkness had been inside him all along.

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><p>The door slid resolutely shut behind his one female teammate and not yet known to him, his days of chasing after brilliant pink were over. His new goal resided in a scratched forehead protector that he kept stashed underneath the hospital pillow, one arm constantly hidden underneath the fluffy mass when other people were around so that his fingers could keep a grip on it and reality.<p>

There were no visitors at night. Just the crickets that sang from the trees outside of his fourth storey window.

With a whimper, Naruto kicked off his covers and rolled over on the bed, taking in a deep breath of sterile air and grimacing at the scent of it. Laying on his side, he looked past the single, wilting flower in its glass vase and his glazed blue eyes tried to focus on anything in the night sky beyond the window. He grit his teeth and rolled back over to face the other way when there was nothing.

Just endless black on black on black…

Kind of like _his _eyes.

He turned back over again.

He fell asleep a couple of hours later, his tired eyelids finally giving up on his searching and slipping closed on a shooting star.

When he left the hospital a week later, he made sure that the scarred forehead protector was tucked safely in his jacket, well away from prying eyes. He nodded politely at the occasional person that wished him good health on his way back to his apartment, but negated to enter into any longer conversations, imagining a look of great offence upon their faces as he scuttled off down the street.

In his room he transferred his precious consolation prize to the second drawer, at the back and beside the long sticks of unused candles. Keeping it out in the open simply wouldn't do. When people like Kakashi enjoyed showing up on your windowsill like a pervert with next to nothing warning, you tended to learn not to keep certain personal items out in the open.

He no longer had to keep his windows firmly shut at night, no longer had to fear the stones that might come pelting through if he allowed his room to glow like a beckoning target. The new lamppost flickered through his thin curtains.

He thought, there was no more need to open that second drawer.

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><p>He was glad that he spent the next two and a half years away from Konoha.<p>

For awhile he could pretend to forget. It was easy to do when training with Jiraiya. Much time was spent trying to recover from muscle aches that rendered him helpless on the dirty floors of a motel room, or from headaches that usually came about when Jiraiya got drunk and tattered off somewhere for the night before returning in the morning, smelling of the dead and sounding even less comprehensible.

Naruto kept correspondence with those in Konoha, namely Iruka, Tsunade, Sakura and Kakashi. Kakashi, the lazy ass, could barely even be considered correspondence. It was always just a little footnote dropped in at the bottom of Sakura's letter and signed off with a ridiculously wide smiley face ('don't do any naughty things that I wouldn't do!').

He once wrote a letter to Sasuke as well. It started with bastard, it ended with bastard. The end of his brush was chewed unrelentingly between his front teeth as he tried to think of a way that would actually encourage the bastard –because he was, dammit!— to come back rather than burn the letter at first instance. He locked himself up in their room in a remote inn on a cliff –how did Jiraiya even _know_ about these places? – and spent the day writing and rewriting, sometimes throwing things on the floor and even off the cliff in his anger.

Jiraiya came back in the early evening –surprising, really – and blinked at the barrage of black and white papers that fell out the door when he opened it with his own key (he had gotten sick of Naruto locking him out after the first few months). A little anxiously, he peered inside to make sure that his student hadn't drowned. He called his name.

Ah, there was an arm, right next to that teapot and…toad?

"Naruto. You know that summons can't find Sasuke, right?"

There was silence. Then a moan and sob came from the twitching pile. The red and green toad croaked consolingly.

Jiraiya wisely asked the inn owner to rent him another room for the night.

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><p><em>Dear Bastard,<em>

_How is living in a hole with that snake bastard going? I hope it sucks. I __**know**__ it sucks. Ero-sennin told me all about that slimy snake's living habits. You better keep your door locked (you __**are**__ in a different room, right?)_

_My sensei is better. Full stop. Does __**your **__sensei take you out for ramen? I'll take points off since he also takes me to his stupid red light districts, but he makes up for it by bringing me to the festivals. I swear the lazy hermit knows every single festival under the sun. He always brings us to villages that have something happening. I wish you could see. The last town we went to celebrated these really creepy dolls. _

_So maybe that one wasn't that fun, but still, it's good. I'm free, you know. I'm not stuck with a guy that keeps me locked up in his creepy hideout all day long._

_That sounded a bit wrong. _

_Come back to Konoha, we can find you a better sensei._

_Future Hokage, Naruto._

_P.S. Christmas is coming. Hope you see the light, bastard._

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><p>Why did Sasuke choose the darkness? What could he possibly <em>see<em> in it?

"All that time spent chasing after me, would have been better off spent on training to become Hokage, don't you think?"

_I know your choice. You would choose the village over me. Don't pretend otherwise._

"A person that cannot save a friend doesn't deserve to become Hokage."

_No._

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><p>There were no words for when Sasuke came back.<p>

Well. The council had plenty of words, but Naruto made sure to throw his weight. They actually listened to him nowadays, surprise, surprise.

There was awkward silence.

For a few days.

A week.

Months.

Naruto couldn't understand why his chest seemed to clinch and hurt whenever he saw someone with raven hair on the street. He was being foolish. It couldn't have been Sasuke. Several of his friends and some ANBU had told him that the Uchiha spent most of his time either fixing up his mansion or practising at the training grounds.

Naruto wanted to join him, but Sasuke was restricted to minimal ninjutsu. It wouldn't really be fair. Or at least, that was what he told himself.

Sasuke had willingly returned to this.

He wondered if Sasuke regretted it.

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><p>"Why are you avoiding me, idiot?"<p>

Naruto jumped and almost had a heart attack, a single roll of toilet paper dropping from his basket and unspooling on the tiled floor.

"I'm not avoiding anyone!"

He turned and looked into Sasuke's eyes –which he most definitely had not been avoiding – and saw deep, dark onyx. He stared. Sasuke stared back. They were in the middle of the supermarket aisle and with a growl of embarrassment, he grabbed the other's hand and pulled them out the store, leaving their baskets on the ground.

"You're doing it again," Sasuke said as they walked down the small, empty street together, both of them with their hands retreated to their pockets. Naruto looked to his left, not lifting his head high enough to see all of Sasuke's face, but enough to see his pale chin and longer locks of hair.

"What?"

"Avoiding me."

Naruto stopped walking and Sasuke came to a halt as well, the two of them standing between two sets of fences that gave them privacy. His face was blank as he gave the Uchiha his undivided attention…

…which he had had all along anyway.

"What do you expect me to do?" he muttered. "Things can't go back to before."

_That's impossible_, he thought with a wince, no matter how hard he'd tried and how much he told himself. Some things, like _himself_, just weren't the same anymore.

"Why the hell not? You're getting on my nerves."

"Me?.!" Naruto pointed furiously at the others face. "Why, you bastard—!"

"It's starting already."

Naruto seethed at the smug raven, even as his finger lowered and his brain begrudgingly acknowledged that this kind of routine felt natural.

"Come with me."

Sasuke was the one to lift his arm and reconnect their hands. The touch was so foreign,_ Sasuke's _touch had become so foreign, that Naruto didn't even think about how this was certainly not how things had been before. He let the Uchiha impatiently pull him down to the training ground, protesting once when he realised where they were going– "It's _night_!" – but not putting up anymore of a façade to deter the other.

Once upon a time they had talked with their bodies, always had. Sasuke didn't even use ninjutsu, it was all taijutsu, and Naruto pondered between strikes whether all taijutsu experts had to be this touchy. Sure, he had heard about the 'slide and grip' movement, but was that really necessary here?

Panting and covered with bruises, the both of them lay sprawled on the dirt. Naruto stared up at the nightscape, marvelling at the vast number of stars that he was able to find. At the hundredth star, he finally jumped to his feet. From the ground, Sasuke turned his head to look up at him, silently asking.

Naruto grinned at him.

"We can clean up at my place!"

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><p>He was hesitant about spending Christmas Eve alone with Sasuke. Sure, they talked more, they sparred, and they even went on missions together after Tsunade had given the Uchiha clearance. But being alone with him, at a festival that that for all intents and purposes, felt <em>couply<em>?

Something still didn't allow him to feel comfortable with that. He hoped that it wasn't something to do with the multiple times that Sasuke had tried to kill him.

Sakura explained before he could even ask her that she would be going with Lee, on a _date_, emphasised. Kakashi had mysteriously disappeared. Naruto tried to look like a wallflower in the mission room before that effort was futilely quashed and Sasuke announced tonelessly and without space for protest that they would be going down to the festival happening in the village centre.

"Didn't know you were such a people person," Naruto muttered mulishly.

Sasuke smirked befittingly. "I'm not there for the people."

_I wish you could see_.

Naruto refused to see.

Weaving broodingly through the crowds of people behind Sasuke, he was so intent on distracting himself with the displays that he was almost knocked over when a large gaggle of chattering girls rushed by him to look at some purses. Teetering, he was stabilised by a hand gripping his and looked up to see Sasuke's serious face, the arm that he had held out blocking a scared looking couple as he tugged Naruto forwards.

They continued walking and Naruto was the one to shutter Sasuke's hand before it could leave his. Sasuke looked down at their interlaced fingers questioningly and then up to Naruto's flushed face, before smirking and leading them onwards.

Sasuke somehow ended up walking with him back to his apartment. Strings of glowing, rainbow lights lined the streets that they walked along, ending with a brilliantly large, glowing bauble that hung from the pole right outside of Naruto's window. Some nice soul must have put it there on purpose and Naruto looked at it appreciatively.

"Did you have any lights like these in Sound?" he asked the other.

Sasuke looked down at him –because he was still taller by a few centimetres, unfortunately – then shook his head very slightly, reminiscing.

"There was no light in Sound," he murmured, gaze unfocused on the bauble.

Naruto gripped Sasuke's hand harder.

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><p>Rainbow lights from outside the window pane glowed on the sheets and pale walls that were still not yet painted orange. Not bothering to flick the switch, Naruto somehow found himself clutching a dark mass like it meant so much more.<p>

Their ankles crashed into the table, they nearly fell over things that _still shouldn't have been there_, before they finally went tumbling lip-locked with an audible _crack_ onto Naruto's small bed.

Sasuke experienced the brunt of the fall but ignored the pain in his back as one of his hands gripped Naruto's hair harshly, pulling the blonde down in another mesh of curling tongues and desperate lips. Naruto growled into their violent kiss, surprised when with a groan, Sasuke gripped his thighs and rolled them over. His side went crashing across the window sill along the way and he grunted with the sharp pain.

In apology, Sasuke nipped softly at his lips as the both of them lay there.

Naruto had enough of gentle. Since when were they ever gentle?

He reached up and tore the close fitting shirt from Sasuke's body, hands gripping and making a competition out of who could get the other naked first. He won but his grin disappeared when it was Sasuke that claimed the prize.

_My light, my light_.

"_Aah…"_

Who cared about anything else, he thought as Sasuke pressed forwards between his legs. Who cared about light and dark and what to do when one was missing? Panting and with his sweaty blonde locks plastered across his forehead and pillow, he pulled down the equally sweaty raven that had been the only thing missing this entire time.

A Christmas bauble glowed outside, its caressing light given freely.

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><p>"Whaaaaaat! Are you kidding me? That's a <em>D-Rank!<em>"

Without lifting his head at the outburst, Naruto's eyes darted from the mission sheet that he had been about to sign off and instead flickered up to Konohamaru and his team. Konohamaru was standing closest to his table, his hands balled into fists by his side as he glaringly dared Naruto to put his brush to paper. Internally, Naruto snickered. Sweet, little team 5. He flicked his eyes back down to the green sheet and smoothly signed off his name on the line at the bottom right.

"Noooooo!" Konohamaru screeched and put his hands to his head in a mental agony for what was to come.

Ebisu hurried past him and stepped forward to take the mission sheet from Naruto, obviously rushing to get his team out of the office before Konohamaru could take his dramatics one step further.

"I expect the streets to be very inviting, Ebisu," Naruto said calmly as he passed the sheet over. He rested his elbows on the table and laced his fingers, setting his chin on them whilst regarding the Chuunin team with a dangerous smile. "_Very _inviting."

Code for, there better not be one inch of lamppost or fence left uncovered by the time you're done.

"Just you wait, boss!" Konohamaru shouted as Moegi and Udon wheeled him out the door by his arms, "when I become Hokage, there will _be no Christmas!_"

"Merry Christmas to you too, ya little Grinch," he called back. Smirking to himself after the door had closed, he flopped onto his cushiony chair, rolling back a few inches with the movement.

"Was it really necessary to give them that mission? They_ are_ Chuunin."

Naruto spun around, crossing one ankle over the other knee when his chair stopped rolling. He raised an eyebrow at the raven lounging on the ledge just outside the window.

"Would you like to do it, instead?" he asked innocently.

Sasuke lazily raised his hands in defence. "I understand. They do the best job."

"Well…" Naruto drawled slyly, rolling his chair closer, "I don't think that that's completely true."

Sasuke rolled his eyes and settled himself more comfortably against the wood. Ever since he had hung that bauble outside of Naruto's window and unwittingly wooed the blonde, Naruto had taken to obsession. He warily looked down when a hand gripped his thigh and squeezed lightly. Tracking up the arm to the owner's eyes, he took in the glowing azure that made everything else around them seem to grow darker in comparison.

Perhaps obsession wasn't that bad, and with a smirk he leaned forward to meet eager lips with his own.

For all those orphans and travellers without a family, there were the Christmas lights that would soon be lighting up Konoha like a constellation on the map. They belonged to everyone, and there was no price for that light at this time of year.

For them, hurrying to finish Naruto's documents before they could hasten back for dinner and more, there was a home that no longer needed any of that extra comfort.

_THE END._

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><p>Reviews would be much appreciated!<p> 


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